Blaubeuren, Freiburg and Basel

/ Germany/Switzerland/
Blaubeuren, Freiburg and Basel

Once again, my work took me to Mainz, Germany. The winter was nearly over (in the technical sense) and by chance a friend from Australia was to be in Berlin for a conference, so we made plans to catch up. We had other friends in the south of Germany, so after some searching, we decided on a weekend trip to Blaubeuren; a small town with a big hole. Additionally, another opportunity for travel would present itself on my return to Paris: rather than head home directly, I would make a detour to meet up with Mia halfway between Geneva and Mainz and once again we would find ourselves in the Black Forest.

Read More

Gemmi Pass

/ Gemmi Pass, Switzerland/
Gemmi Pass

With the less than satisfying Parisian winter instilling a desire for snow which had been quenched neither by a trip to the Arctic nor a week of skiing, we headed into the Bernese Alps to traverse one of the more famous passes in Switzerland, the Gemmi Pass. Sandwiched between the Rinderhorn and the Daubenhorn, the pass itself has an elevation of 2250 metres and runs between the small town of Kandersteg and the thermal spa town of Leukerbad.

Read More

Les Trois Vallées

/ The Alps, France/
Les Trois Vallées

One of the main questions one faces when planning a ski trip in Europe is where to go; one is simply spoilt for choice. Last year we had a week inAvoriaz, part of les portes de soleil conglomeration, which was fantastic, so wherever we went this time had to have a similar amount of terrain. Logistically it was challenging, as there were four of us: one from Paris, one from Geneva, one from Tübingen (Germany) and another from Budapest. To keep costs down, we did not want to be in Switzerland, which left us with Austria or France. We ended with up with France, as we discovered Les trois Vallées region. Nestled in the northern Alps and comprised of eight resorts, the skiable terrain is the largest in the world and with lifts servicing heights of 3230 metres, it was too good to pass up.

Read More

Antwerp

/ Anvers, Belgium/
Antwerp

Doing a fair amount of travel, I am on all of the SNCF spam mailing lists, which is not necessarily a bad thing. For example, when the Thalys sale starts, you can be ready and pick up return tickets to almost any destination serviced by them for under 40€. Thanks to one of these sales, I found myself with a weekend in Antwerp, a city that to me at the time, aside from being a historically important place, was known primarily for diamond-trading and fashion.

Read More

Montpellier and le Cirque de Mourèze

/ Languedoc-Roussillon, France/
Montpellier and le Cirque de Mourèze

One style of travelling is to not make any plans and just see where the wind takes you. At the other extreme, there is planning everything down to a tee months in advance. I would place myself in the latter category, but with elements of the former. For instance, travel destinations are typically chosen many months in advance and planned out carefully, and likewise as soon as it is possible to purchase train tickets, they will be purchased. This has the benefit of saving a lot of money, but also gives you the “looking forward to an adventure” sensation. However during the adventure, we are often flying by the seat of our pants. So sometime during autumn, a mid-winter trip to the south of France was booked with the assumption being that we would escape the freeze of the north. As we were saving some other destinations in the south until spring/summer, we chose a location with equal length train trips from Geneva and Paris and ended up with Montpellier. When the time arrived, as the winter had been extremely mild, the “escape” was not to be the jealously-inducing weekend that we expected, but it would be a welcome adventure nonetheless. The region has some amazing landscape, so we decided to spend half our time out and about, and the other half exploring the city.

Read More